“You’ll never guess who I saw in town the other day,” said Mma Potokwane. “I could hardly believe it.”

“I cannot guess,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Was it somebody well-known?”

“A bit,” said Mma Potokwane enigmatically. “Well-known in the jazz world, perhaps.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing, waiting for Mma Potokwane to continue.

“Note,” she said simply. “Note Mokoti, your first husband. Remember him?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MMA MAKUTSI FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT MR PHUTI RADIPHUTI

WHILE MMA RAMOTSWE was embarking on her second slice of cake with Mma Potokwane, Mma Makutsi was still at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, tidying up. Mma Ramotswe had given her permission to close early that day since she herself was effectively taking the entire afternoon off. They were still busy with the affairs of a number of clients, but there was nothing that could not wait, and Mma Ramotswe knew that Mma Makutsi would like to have adequate time to get ready for her dancing class, the second one, which would be held that evening.

Mma Makutsi had finished the day’s filing—a task which, as had been drummed into her at the Botswana Secretarial College, should never be left to lie over for the following day. This message had come from no less a person than the Principal herself, a tall, imposing woman who had brought the highest standards to the secretarial profession in Botswana.

“Don’t let paper lie about, girls,” she had admonished them. “Let each paper cross your desk once, and once only. That is a very good rule. Put everything away. Imagine that at night there are big paper rats that will come out and eat all the paper on your desk!”

That had been a very clever way of putting it, thought Mma Makutsi. The idea of the paper rat coming out at night to eat unfiled letters was a vivid one, and she had thought that it was not helpful of those silly, glamorous girls in the back row to laugh like that at what the Principal had said. The trouble with those girls had been that they were not committed secretaries. Everybody knew that most of them came to the Botswana Secretarial College simply because they had worked out that the best way of marrying a man with a good job and a lot of money was to become a secretary to such a man. So they went through the College course looking bored and making very little effort. It would have been different, it occurred to Mma Makutsi, had there been a part of the curriculum entitled: How to Marry Your Boss. That would have been very popular with those girls, and they would have paid very close attention to such a course.